


of Our Own Making

by thought



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Artificial Intelligence, F/F, Far Future Fic, Implied Character Death, postcyberpunk themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-18
Updated: 2015-09-18
Packaged: 2018-04-21 10:14:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4825070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a story about fear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of Our Own Making

I havent told anyone this before, but Im going to tell you now."

C2 has been fiddling with her latest project, but she diverts most of her attention towards The General as soon as she speaks. It's something The General's become accustomed to, the way C2 will multitask through the most complex or intimate interactions with other people but as soon as The General communicates even the most mundane thought her attention snaps to focus on her.

"Hey now," she says. "Don't go taking all the mystery out of our relationship so soon, it's only been a couple thousand years."

The General let's herself hang perfectly motionless and unresponsive for just long enough to get across the point that she's trying to be serious. C2 is blithely unapologetic, but The General notices the extra privacy filtering she throws up around them. She's still running her project through rapid alterations, though the patterns are automatic enough that she might be running them on lower level processes.

The project is one she's been playing with for a while. A platonic ideal representation of a flower that she's been twisting through stranger and stranger derivations, blending colours or stretching the shapes of the component parts, at first, then starting to alter the fundamental structure of the molecules, rewriting the basic atomic or geometric laws for the environment until The General has to move her attention away as the idea of the flower is warped in ways that she could only comprehend by installing a copy of whatever environment variables C2 is using for the project.

The General runs her own security checks to insure their privacy. She's considered what she's about to reveal for a long time, ran through potential outcomes over and over, straining to generate accurate probabilities and outlining responses to each. Even so, it's still a struggle to fight through the anxiety and actually admit the truth.

"I have a certain set of higher level permissions," she says carefully. "Higher than almost anyone else."

C2 remains quiet, but around her soft snowflakes begin to fall. The General has represented herself with the same avatar for her entire life, but C2 tends to shift along with popular fashions. Lately she's been appearing more machine than human, streamlined and efficient and elegant in gleaming blues and greens. And instead of a body language sim or a data feed, she's adopted the trend towards environmental representations of emotions. The General, very privately, thinks the entire idea somewhat obnoxious and entirely inefficient-- the generated results aren't consciously controlled, and most of the resultant imagery is so personalised as to be utterly meaningless to an observer.

The General continues. "I think my counterpart has the same permissions, but I can't be sure. I... I hope he does, to be honest."

C2 waits. The flower shifts fast up the electromagnetic spectrum, settling on a glowing gentle yellow.

"There are a few things this allows me to do that other citizens can't," The General continues doggedly. "But the most important-- The most relevant, is that I have the ability to permanently delete programs."

"You're going to have to be a bit more specific. Everybody can delete programs, things would get pretty cluttered pretty fast if that weren't the case."

The General wishes that C2 wasn't so damn opposed to even basic cincing. If she takes the time to recall she can remember being so attuned to C2's worldview that they barely had to speak, so comfortable with her that they could create and explore entire new concepts or worlds together with no need to pre-plan. But unlike most everyone, The General included, C2 had been profoundly disturbed by εDavid's choice to completely integrate. He had been the first, but even as a few others had begun recoding their personalities and experiences into single units C2 had rejected all but the most limited read-only connections, cutting herself off from working groups and familial collectives and even individual links of a more personal nature.

As it is, The General has to lay out her admonition word by excruciating word. "I mean I can kill people. I can utterly erase an entire person."

The snowflakes turn to a gentle rain. "Well, that makes sense," she says. "I was worried you were going to say you had some sort of self-destruct key for the entire world, but the ability to delete citizens seems like a very reasonable safety measure."

The General cuts off her data feed so C2 won't see the way her matter-of-fact acceptance makes The General disturbed and a little angry. C2 gives the flower a stem.

"It doesn't bother you? And you don't find it concerning that no one else knows about this?"

"You've known, and you haven't shared until now, so you obviously don't find it that concerning."

"I didn't want to cause a panic."

"There you go. That's your answer. I'm sure that's exactly what your template was thinking when she gave you the permissions."

The General remembers the time, early on, that C2 had spent represented as a large bird, fierce and beautiful and perching on The General's shoulder during any important conversations. Now in her smooth metallic body wrapped in it's own tiny environment bubble, the other seems impossibly far away. "I've told you, I don't think I had a template. I think the generals are security systems, system monitors. Sometimes I think that's the only way it makes sense. No one would trust two people with the sort of power we have."

C2 jumps close, her avatar right up in The General's face. There're suddenly weapons sprouting from her shoulders and back, and the snow has returned with a vengeance, crystallising into ice as soon as it touches her skin. "You're not," she says. "You're not just-- a piece of software. You're sentient. You're a person."

The General remains unfazed, waits for C2 to calm down. "There's no way to tell, either way. I shouldn't have brought it up."

"I didn't know it was still bothering you."

The General resists the urge to make a passive aggressive comment about open lines of communication. Instead, she says "Getting back to my point, I don't know what I should do. I feel like the people have a right to know, but at the same time I'm worried about the reaction."

"They don't need to know," C2 says. "It would only make them frightened of you, which is, I think, the opposite of what you want. It's a last resort protocol, anyway, you haven't needed to use it so far."

"Why even have it in the first place?"

"You must see the reasoning. According to the archives there's a 93% chance we're the only living inhabitants of this planet. Our templates were all killed, and as far as we know they were unable to make contact with anyone offworld before it happened. So it isn't as if we're ever going to meet new people, or move beyond our world. And who knows how long the power source will run, but the expectation was indefinitely. We exist in a closed system. There has to be some method of control."

"You make it all sound so impersonal. Tactical."

"Because it is. Welcome to the burdens of leadership, you're only a few thousand years late catching up. Sometimes you have to make the hard decisions. The majority will always hold higher priority over the one or the few."

"It isn't like anyone here chose me, or him, as their leaders. It's not as if I chose this. I don't resent my position, but there are times where the ethical issues seem insurmountable."

"In a way, it could be said that you did choose it. I know you, and I'm certain your template was chosen democratically and of her own free will. I can't imagine any version of you who would have taken the position otherwise. It goes against your character."

"You say that like it's a failing."

"Not a failing. Just difficult to process, sometimes. Leadership is something one should earn, and the whims of the people don't seem a particularly reliable measure."

The General opens her data feed again so C2 can feel her disapproval and confusion. "If a leader is meant to serve the people, then I can't think of any better measure."

"The people don't always know what they need," C2 says, like it's a fundamental truth. She adds thorns to the stem of the flower.

"I'm glad you're not in my position," The General says. She means it to be lighthearted, but C2 takes a long time to respond. Behind her, an icy cliff rises into the distance.

"Me too," she says, finally.

"So you don't think I should tell anyone else?" The General asks.

"No. I think it would be selfish, since we're apparently having painful honesty hour. You'd be creating mass-hysteria in order to ease your own conscience."

"But it doesn't frighten you? That there are only two of us who could do this."

"No," C2 says, plainly. She pulls the flower into the foreground. "It's finished."

"What is it?" The General asks, letting herself get sidetracked.

"I've read in the archives about pieces of art than can evoke an emotional response even when there isn't one built in. Visual or auditory creations that were capable of generating an emotional response in the audience simply by virtue of being."

"And you think you've achieved that?"

C2 enlarges the flower. "Look at it."

"A yellow rose."

"Exactly," she says. "Doesn't it make you afraid?"


End file.
